Goob, that's amazing you're doing this for your cousin. I hope you'll have an easy pregnancy, good luck

thanks. pregnancy/birth has typically been "easy" for me, so i jumped at the chance to do it. my cousin will be SUCH a great mom, i'm just sad that she had to go through so much pain and disappointment before all this could happen. i'm currently in the middle of the morning sickness. it's not the most fun part, and i hope it passes quickly.

my two daughters were home births, the last one being a water birth, and that's what we are planning for this time around as well.

What a wonderful gift, goob! One of my friends was a surrogate a couple of years ago and she counts it amongst the greatest experiences she's ever had.

aww, that's wonderful. i keep thinking that no matter what challenge i face (right now, morning sickness is kicking my butt)... the end result will be one that i will be proud of for years <3 plus i get to set a great example for my own kids. i wish i knew other surro's in real life, i've only met a couple online.

Lots of good news at today's OB appointment. I knew I had to be connected to a fetal monitor, but I found out today it's wireless and waterproof so I can walk around as much as I want and shower. Also the OB said she's happy to let me labor at my own pace for as long as I like. And we can wait to put in the insulin/glucose IVs (and disconnect my pump) until my blood sugars start behaving erratically, which I feel like is a good compromise.

And I'm officially full term now, so we're all rooting for Pumpkin Head to come out before he gets much larger. We start discussing c-sections once he hits 9 1/2 pounds since there's a pretty high rate of shoulder dystocia for people with diabetes, so sooner is better than later.

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 6025Location: United States of New England

that's great news mollyjade!

i had wireless fetal monitors briefly and then when the battery died it was one more thing that just keep beeping every like 30 mins at me and for some reason they never went back to the wireless ones. maybe cause i wasnt allowed to walk around. i also got the major stink eye when i dared to suggest after being in the hospital for like 3-4 days it sure would b e nice to take a brief shower!

glad you came up with a compromise you like for the insulin even though it stinks they wont just let you control it yourself!

Oh, I should probably mention that I had a baby! Julia was born on Saturday morning. Thanks to Pinko for suggesting the name after a dream, it seemed like a good one so we stuck with it!

The hospital birth actually went fine, we had to put up a bit of a fight with the night head nurse at first, but the OB was a very good advocate for us and clarified that our plan to have a relatively unhindered, natural birth was fine with him. The day head nurse was fantastic. The birth went more or less according to plan, and the biggest issue was, I think that J was born OP (face up); you can hear ahead of time that this makes labor more difficult and you're like, oh, whatever, but it actually was a great deal more painful. In retrospect, I don't think I would have opted for an epidural if I'd known that going in but I do think I would've spent more time on the hippie voodoo stuff at the turning babies website!

Anyway, the hospital setting was kind of annoying, especially once the actual birth had already happened and we were stuck twiddling our thumbs and being woken up every five minutes for "VITAL SIGNS!" for the next 30 hours, but it wasn't the end of the world certainly. It was, however, a VERY different atmosphere and interesting to see how the support and care was very different. I'll probably talk about the contrasts more on the birth stories thread. Compared to my midwife and assistant attended home birth, it felt both like I was being poked and prodded a lot and yet there were long stretches of time when no one was around and when pushing her out my husband had to go into the hallway and be all "hey, there's a head coming out, anyone want to attend this birth?"

She was born at 7lb15oz (so just about a pound over V) and 20" long. Definitely looks a lot like V did, though a lot chubbier! And she was back up to birth weight at her 48 hour appointment, so obviously feeding is getting off to a much better start. In general everything has been so much more relaxing this time around.